A place where I can make you feel what it is like to work in an office, whether you want to or not.

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

We'll Be Back After A Brief Break

I just returned from a day off. Actually, because of the Thanksgiving holiday and the weekend, I haven’t been at work in 5 days. Coming back to work even after a brief leave is really difficult. It is as if everything I knew, that I had learned in the past year or so of my employment here, was sucked out of my head as I was away from the office for 5 whole days.

It started when I got in my car this morning. (Okay, not my car. My dad’s car because my car need to be fixed after I was hit by a rather large SUV a couple weeks ago. Yeah, tons of fun.) Anyway, I sat there and I didn’t even have the energy to turn the key. I wanted to stay at home and watch bad daytime TV and not have to get out of my flannel pajama pants and a t-shirt.

But I had to go to work. A little voice deep down in me was telling me that the proper thing to do was to just get to work and get back into my routine.

On arrival at work, I found it difficult to get out of the car. I wanted to stay and listen to talk radio and not have to deal with everything that I knew was waiting for me at my desk.

But again, that little voice started chiding me for being lazy and told me to get out of the car and into the building.

I took the elevator because the stairs looked too daunting. A brief wave to one of the receptionists and I was in. People immediately started asking how my time off was. My pat answer “Nice”. I didn’t want to tell them how awesome it was to sleep in as late as I wanted to and not have to think about what I was going to wear. How my mom and I hit up the mall yesterday when everyone else was at work. About discovering the restaurant that serves martini flights with my cousin. No, instead I just told them it was “Nice”.

At my desk I cringed when I saw the red light indicating messages on my machine. Another when I saw the 30 or so e-mails in my Inbox. (P.S. – Thank you Outlook for your Out Of Office Message that never seems to work on my computer.) And yet a third as I dragged myself to the coffee bar and saw that the coffee pot with the duct tape on the handle was empty.

So I made another pot, when back to my desk, and did what was really important: checked my personal e-mails, Facebook messages, and how I was doing in my celebrity fantasy league (2nd place).

It is after lunch and my day is crawling along. I don’t want to answer important e-mails or return phone calls. I have tried to occupy my time with the Internet, but even that is starting to get old.

So yet again, the little man inside my head has started whispering about the stack of work waiting for me on my desk. It is with a bit of sadness that I stare at the pile and know I am back at work.